A volume of papers from a Eusebius conference

A year or so back there was a conference somewhere in Europe about Eusebius. I never saw it announced, and the few people who seemed to know about it responded evasively to my requests for further information. Possibly they were afraid that someone as unacademic as me might turn up! Indeed I might have done.

The papers from the conference are being gathered in a volume to be published by Brill. Interesting a translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s De Sollemnitate Paschalis is among them:

Mark DelCogliano, “The Promotion of the Constantinian Agenda in Eusebius of Caesarea’s On the Feast of Pascha,” in Sabrina Inowlocki and Claudio Zamagni (eds.), Reconsidering Eusebius: A Fresh Look at his Life, Work, and Thought (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

My correspondant adds:

I don’t know when the volume is supposed to appear. It’s not yet listed on the Brill website, so presumably not soon.

Note that the article is not merely a translation. It is a study that argues that the short treatise was commissioned by Constantine as part of his campaign to eliminate the celebration of Easter on different dates around the empire. A translation is appended to the study.

The book is something to look out for, if not to buy — Brill volumes are so expensive as to be library-only purchases.

That’s why I love your site so much Roger. I get information about texts like this which would only be known to a specialist in the field. Kudos to you for tracking down this information. You not only translate and publish the texts but also find a way to inform us why we should care about the texts.

Well, as you note, your translation and this one are in different price ranges. Also, it’s not as if you’re trying to get tenure somewhere.

You know… and this is totally unfounded speculation… I wonder if the evasiveness was an attempt to erect a sort of wall of separation between you and other people doing translations? People get so worried about plagiarism and working on the same subjects, in the academic world. (Well, except when everybody on God’s green earth is writing about Shakespeare. So I guess it’s just minor authors that need the publicity that get the paranoia. Sheesh.)

Given the low status of translations in the academic world, however, it might be more a case of shyness about talking about stuff in front of a known blogger. Personally, I’d think that any publicity you could have given a conference or upcoming publications of papers would have been welcome, though.

So it may indeed be just plain shyness about having somebody around whom not everybody knows. I gather that even when professional religious people attend these things, people get very shy unless they’re also professorial academics from known universities with known associates. So having some layman blogger amateur around may have been difficult for people to picture, even though they were sure you weren’t going to do anything to get them all arrested. 🙂

If it makes you feel any better, professional conferences are pretty much equally shy everywhere. I showed up at a cartoonist conference in Hollywood while on vacation out there, out of sheer curiosity and because I had the money to pay the fee; and you would have thought I had two heads because they didn’t recognize my face. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fake knowing how to draw or anything, or I might have schmoozed for a job. 🙂 The funny thing was, it turned out I did have some mutual acquaintances; and after that was revealed, people seemed to magically assume I was there for some sane, project-related reason.

I’m still glad I went, but I guess I should have worn sunglasses and invoked more of my “fade into walls” power.

Mark is OK, tho — no, it was other people whom I knew who were evasive. If I’d known he was going, I’d have asked him about it!

As you say, I’m really addressing a different audience to that which reads Brill volumes.

Translations only do have a low status. I was putting together a “from the publisher” page for the volumes I’m intending to put out, and explaining the what and wherefore — basically that some texts are so awful to work on, that no scholar has ever fancied the idea of risking his career when the result could not have been of adequate research standard; but that we could still use a translation of them.

Roger, et al,
As a participant in the conference, I would only like to note that it was something of a round-table discussion of the papers of each of the invited speakers. “Amateur” or “layman” bloggers were not even on anyone’s minds. I find it encouraging that “the public” might have been interested in attending. But, it was in a smaller room at the Free University in Brussels (2008). It just wasn’t the venue for a larger gathering. In any case the volume is (finally) due to be out in a month or so.
While Brill volumes are usually priced a bit prohibitively, the study of Eusebius is continuing apace. Hopefully, many of the papers delivered at the ongoing Eusebius sessions at the SBL conferences (which I have been organizing) will soon see the light of day….

The fight to regain control of my inbox continues, and so I have only just seen this. But this is very, very exciting! I will make this a blog post itself, if I may! Very interested to hear that Claudio Zamagni is doing something on the Gospel Problems and Solutions!

Can you tell me whether it is possible to access these papers? Are they published?